The War of the Worlds by H. G. (Herbert George) Wellspage 1 of 216 (00%)

The War of the Worlds

by H. G. Wells [1898]

But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be inhabited? . . . Are we or they Lords of the World? . . . And how are all things made for man?-- KEPLER (quoted in The Anatomy of Melancholy)

BOOK ONE

THE COMING OF THE MARTIANS

CHAPTER ONE

THE EVE OF THE WAR

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenthcentury that this world was being watched keenly and closely byintelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that asmen busied themselves about their various concerns they werescrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with amicroscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm andmultiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to